One thought on “Part II Minute 9 – Future Fashion”

I thought it was just kind of lazy that they had MJF play both of his kids. I mean, they did a really good job with the drag makeup, and there are people who don’t realize that MJF is in drag. But at the same time, it’s like, “Okay, seriously, how many people are these actors going to play?” There cannot be that many genetic clones in history. Now, if you think about Seamus and Marty on a meta level, you could think of Marty being a genetic throwback to Seamus. Like, Seamus’s willingness to do new things, to travel all the way west to come to Hill Valley, that kind of thing is the same as Marty’s sense of adventure.

With regard to MJF playing both Marty and his son, I can understand why they did it in the movie. I mean, like Nick says, it’s a very easy visual cue for people to get. “Hey, there’s Marty’s son!” I still think it’s really lazy, but I can understand. (I also find it fascinating that Marty Jr. has brown eyes. You don’t notice it until Griff and his goons are beating the tar out of him, but there’s a closeup, and it’s like, “Oh, wow!”)

Having Crispin Glover play Marty Jr. would’ve been especially good, because Marty Jr. is supposed to be this weak-willed person, and in the original timeline, George is the epitome of weak will. So, it would’ve worked on an even deeper level — the weak will has come back into the family line. If Crispin Glover had also played Seamus, it would’ve been interesting to see him play Seamus as revised-timeline George, where he’s more confident and willing to take chances. We didn’t get to see revised-George other than him perving on Marty and Jen, so having a chance to sort of get to know him would’ve been nice. Then again, we have no idea how Crispin was going to play any of the roles, because apparently, Zemeckis had to fight with him a *lot* while filming the first film. Like, during the lunchroom scene, Crispin apparently wanted his hair to stand straight up making him look like he was touching those glowing orbs that uses static electricity to make your hair lift up? And this was after they had already filmed part of the scene, and they were doing coverage or something? Yeeeeeeah, I have no idea.

I do like the one-size-fits-all jacket. It would be awesome for people who don’t fit into standard clothes — small chest, big hips, vice versa.

The idea of the actors doubling up feels symptomatic of the cartoony feel of the sequels. Part III feels a lot less cartoony than Part II because the reason they’re in 1885 is Marty trying to save Doc’s life, and just generally surviving in the era. But Part II feels like they’re not sure what they’re doing. Yeah, it starts with them stumbling around in 2015, but the reason for them to be there in the first place doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

The #1 way that Doc could’ve avoided Marty having a crappy life was to tell him outright “oh, hey, don’t drag race with Needles on this day, because you’re going to ruin your hand, kthxbai!” Just boom, done. Marty and Jen might’ve still gotten together, but their kids would’ve been happy, they would’ve been happy, and life would’ve been great. Where George McFly needs to be shown how to be confident and strong, Marty needs to be saved from his overconfidence and hotheadness.

Now, you can argue that Doc deliberately takes Marty to the future in order to show him what his life is like because he’s a hothead, Doc doesn’t actually *say* it. Any time that he’s given an opportunity to explain or even reference it, he looks very nervous and tries to avoid the subject as best he can, which is understandable. There’s being the bearer of bad news, and then there’s telling your best friend that he screws up in such a horrific way that the rest of his life goes down the toilet.

Which kind of leads me to the chicken thing. They really could’ve done something better to introduce that new element to Marty’s personality. There might’ve been shades of it in the first movie, but there’s never that clunky delivery of just saying it outright. After the (god, it’s so stupid) chase scene on the hoverboards, Marty could take a second and go, “Okay, wait, that was a weird reaction for me, what the hell happened?” And Doc could be there to explain, “I’m guessing that you didn’t have the issue with being thought of as a coward in the original timeline? You’ve always been a bit prickly about that. Fascinating!” And that way, the audience can see that maybe Time tries to correct the fact that Marty came from another timeline.

But yeah, the idea of Doc doing the longest show-don’t-tell of “this is how your life will go if you don’t let go of this stupid idea that you have to prove you’re not a coward all the time” is possible, but it feels like they could’ve done a tiny bit more to reinforce that idea, like have Doc take a moment to be worried about Marty, especially with the hoverboard scene. “You did WHAT? How– he called you a chicken, didn’t he? In the name of Nicolas Copernicus, you need to let that go! It’s going to cause problems!” (Yes, Lorraine talks about it with Marlene, but Marty doesn’t get to hear it.)

I’m sure I could keep going, but I’m going to stop and get on with today. Later!